… dozens of youths went on a rampage, setting the police station in Villiers-le-Bel on fire, ransacking the Arnouville police station and torching two petrol stations …

Why another rampage in Paris? For no good reason:

… Clashes broke out on Sunday night after two teenagers - aged 15 and 16 - were killed when the motorcycle they were driving collided with a police car.

Police sources said the two were riding a stolen mini-motorcycle, and that neither was wearing a helmet.

The police car was on a routine patrol and the teenagers were not being chased by police at the time of the accident, police said. The collision wrecked the front of the car and smashed the windscreen. …

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A must-read by Jeff Robbins of The Australian entitled, “Arabs’ willful neglect deepens Israeli misery:”

… The problem is that all too often, those who blame the US for failing to deliver Mid-East peace are some of the world’s most culpable enablers of Mid-East violence — and those who are themselves actually responsible for erecting the fundamental roadblocks to a resolution of the conflict.

This is so obvious as to almost go without saying — except that the penchant for placing the blame on the US is so widespread and so addictive that it goes largely unsaid.

It was the Arab bloc, including the Palestinian leadership, that decided to reject the UN’s 1947 partition of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, living side by side.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

… On Saturday Other Russia leader and former chess champion Garry Kasparov was arrested during a rally in Moscow. …

Activists holding white flowers met near the headquarters of the liberal Yabloko party, and headed to the site of the unauthorised rally. …

Chess players and people holding flowers: this is what Russian dictator Vladimir Putin fears… Quite natural paranoia for a former KGB goon who has surrounded himself with other KGB goons. Not too long, and we’ll be back in the USSR. From the BBC:

Russian police have broken up an opposition rally, arresting activists for the second day running.

Police detained about 150 people in St Petersburg, including opposition leader Boris Nemtsov - who was later freed.

The protest was organised by the Other Russia, a coalition of anti-Kremlin groups. They accuse the government of crushing dissent ahead of elections.

On Saturday Other Russia leader and former chess champion Garry Kasparov was arrested during a rally in Moscow.

Mr Kasparov was jailed for five days for leading an unauthorised march. …

Unauthorized?!? Actually, words like “apparatchik” (аппаратчик) or “politburo” come to mind. Now that Putin’s exhausted his term as Russian president, he’s eyeing the position of prime minister so he can keep ruling for life.

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A personal, historical vignette

By Cainnech Ó Sullibhain

A few days ago on a Saturday afternoon, I was sitting on a couch in a shopping centre watching people busy doing their Christmas shopping. They all seemed to be in a hurry, rushing around looking for deals in the pre-festive air of Christmas. Every shop was lit up with glitzy decorations in order to attract people. There I sat waiting with the hope that I could meet the demo lady that came by every so often. But it turned out that she was not coming, and would possibly be in the next day.

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By Phyllis Chesler

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ) a prostitute or a victim of trafficking is entitled to justice but only if she has been “forced, tricked, or coerced” into doing what the DOJ calls “sex work”—and if she can prove it. Today, according to U.S. governmental Trafficking Prosecutors, a rescue-worthy prostitute is someone who has been forcibly “trafficked” or “tricked” into sexual slavery. If she is from a Third World country, she commands more DOJ sympathy that does an American child who has escaped from an incestuous and dangerously abusive family in Iowa or Minnesota and who has ended up in the arms of a violent pimp or brothel-owner in another American state. In addition, the DOJ does not seem to count minor children who are used in “commercial sex acts” as trafficking victims because, by definition, they have not necessarily been “coerced” or “duped.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Fareed Zakaria this week claimed that foreign tourists “are filled with horror stories about the inconvenience and indignity of traveling to America.” Really? Maybe Zakaria should’ve waited to see Black Friday in New York today before making such sweeping pronouncements. From CNNMoney.com:

… Walking around midtown Manhattan on Black Friday, you heard shoppers speaking in a smorgasbord of languages.

With the U.S. dollar as weak as it is - the greenback hit a new low against the euro on Friday - it appears that many Europeans flocked to the Big Apple to go bargain hunting, to the delight of retailers.

Sarah T., who works at the information booth in the Manhattan Mall, which includes stores such as Aeropostale (Charts), Radio Shack (Charts, Fortune 500) and Charlotte Russe (Charts), said that overall traffic during the morning of Black Friday was about the same as last year but that there were far more many tourists at the mall than a year ago. And she said many of them were leaving with armfuls of bags. …

“We are definitely seeing an influx of European, Canadian and South American consumers,” said Terry Lundgren, the chairman and CEO of Macy’s Inc (Charts, Fortune 500). “These economies view the dollar as being on sale.”

Lundgren said that, in addition to the company’s flagship Macy’s, the Bloomingdale’s stores on 59th Street and in SoHo in Manhattan were both experiencing a boost from tourists, as were Macy’s locations in Chicago and San Francisco. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The BBC reported today that a Danish court has convicted three Muslims for plotting bomb attacks against Denmark (a country that welcomed these men). But it is not enough for the Beeb to report the news. The BBC has to editorialize about the lawful conviction of Islamist savages, and create a flimsy rationale blaming one of the world’s great liberal democracies for bringing terrorism upon itself:

… Denmark’s military contribution to the US-led campaign in Iraq has prompted fears it could be targeted by militants.

Last year, the country was also the focus of worldwide protests by Muslims, who were angered by a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. …

Could the first paragraph be any less specific? As to the second paragraph, need I remind everyone that Muslims rioted, burned, murdered, and looted all because a Danish newspaper exercised free speech and published a couple of cartoons? — all while the Muslim world spews forth bigoted imagery and labels non-Muslims as “apes” and “pigs.” Sounds like the Beeb is trotting out the old “she got raped because of what she was wearing” argument.

Submit to Islam (which is what the BBC wants)? Never. Submit to Havarti? Every day!

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By Andrew Whitehead

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has petitioned a court to have the label of “un-indicted co-conspirator” removed. CAIR, among many other Islamist groups, was labeled an un-indicted co-conspirator in the recent Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial held in Texas.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/20071121/NATION/111210046/1002

CAIR wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers asking for help in pressuring the Justice Department to remove the designation. CAIR is also asking why the Justice Department publicly named all 306 co-conspirators in the HLF indictment.

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Rosanne Klass’s reissued memoir describes Afghanistan in a more innocent time.

By Phyllis Chesler

Land of the High Flags: Afghanistan When the Going Was Good, by Rosanne Klass (Odyssey, 358 pp., $19.95)

The history of Afghanistan, once known as the “crossroads of the world,” is riven with brutal invasions and world abandonment. Barbarism, slavery, ruthlessness, and disease existed side by side with the country’s enormous physical beauty and the elaborate, formalized hospitality of its people. Conquerors razed Afghanistan’s extraordinary ancient cities and exquisite court palaces — Herat, Ghazni, and Balkh. Genghis Khan, and later Tamerlane, slaughtered significant portions of the Afghan population and returned to the country to conduct raids on the survivors, leaving precious little in the way of art or architecture. Alexander the Great also conquered Afghanistan on his way to India, though his soldiers tended to leave behind descendants rather than smoldering ruins.

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by Daniel Pipes*

What’s wrong with American liberalism? What happened to the self-assured, optimistic, and practical Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy? Why has Joe Lieberman, their closest contemporary incarnation, been run out of the party? How did anti-Americanism infect schools, the media, and Hollywood? And whence comes the liberal rage that conservatives like Ann Coulter, Jeff Jacoby, Michelle Malkin, and the Media Research Center have extensively documented?

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By Benjamin Balint

Abstract: Another generation of anti-Israel intellectuals is coming into its own. To understand what this portends, we might do well to listen to the pronouncements of Tony Judt, historian première classe and representative of a new group that dangerously restyles old ideas.

I. Tony Judt, the accomplished New York University historian, brings both impressive lucidity and considerable learning to his uncommonly readable studies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century social history.

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Send your Staples or Office Depot receipts to Office Max, and tell them why

by Bill Levinson

OfficeMax Drops Michael Savage Ads Over Anti-Islam Bias

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today announced that OfficeMax, a leading office products retailer, has joined a growing list of companies that have stopped advertising on Michael Savage’s nationally-syndicated radio program because of the host’s anti-Muslim views.

Send your Staples or Office Depot receipts to the following address and tell them why.

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By Andrew Whitehead

Once again, it’s “Blame the Jew Day” at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The United States government has invited the Israeli government and a representative of the Palestinians to a meeting at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, USA. The meeting, which may be attended by representatives of up to 40 countries, is the latest attempt by President Bush to jump start the Middle East peace process.

In an article titled “CAIR: Peace Burden on Israel at Annapolis Conference”, CAIR goes to great lengths to put the onus on the Israelis by saying that the Israelis must get serious about promoting justice for the Palestinian people.

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By Barry Rubin

The idea that poverty, relative backwardness, violence, and instability must be caused by external circumstances is engrained in much of the Western intelligentsia. It encourages a tendency to apologize for those regimes and radical groups which are the main cause of continued stagnation and suffering.

In fact, of course, the problems are very much-and usually more-based on history, culture, geography, ideology, and choices made. For example, Muslim-majority countries have much lower participation of women in the economy; are more rural and agricultural; and have had no Enlightenment or industrial revolution. Governments don’t care about developing good health and educational systems. Lack of freedom and cultural restrictions–things changed and challenged in Europe from the sixteenth century onwards–harm economic development and social progress. And so on.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I once worked at the United Nations and have vowed that someday I will write about what a soul-scorching experience it was—especially for someone who was and still is a white Jewish-American feminist and Zionist. I had to absorb the most virulent, almost surreal hatred because of who I am and for the views that I hold. This happened long before I was perceived to have crossed any political aisle.

At the time, when I tried to tell people about this, few wanted to understand. The UN diplomat’s dining room was so elegant, the parties and social circles so colorful and so career-building that even radical feminists did not want to understand that the tyrants and mediocrities that dominated the UN would never, ever police themselves and that sexism, racism, poverty, and even genocide would remain unchecked by this corrupt international body.

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